Hello there! Tried something a little different, a video lookbook for the jewelz. Thanks for looking and as always for your support, inspiration and giggles.
When Joshua Estrin is not discussing genetics with me he can be found interviewing celebs and dishing the facts, not the gossip at Popmuncher.com . He’s also on the Twitter.
I offer social media services such as putting together videos like this one and social strategy at Killer Social.
There are more interviews to come, with John Li, Senior VP of Research and Development, AKA the guy who decides what goes on the menu after making it deliciously awesome, and Becky Maree and Dan Holm of the Outback Social Media team. There will also be more video of my experience on the field. I even… got to interview the fella responsible for inventing the bloomin’ onion. I KNOW!!! Wow, HUH? Stay tuned for that.
But first, here is an inside look at the morning before the game with my co-Social Journo, and Man of Style, Joshua Estrin. I must say he was an absolute treasure to work and play with. I’m still breaking into embarrassingly random and sudden giggle fits.
Oh, and the reason my shoulder looks dislocated is because I’m actually holding up my iPhone video camera with my right arm. I actually have really good posture. LOL
When Joshua Estrin is NOT attending major sporting events with me he can be found at PopMuncher, writing about the world where entertainment, music, fashion and human behavior collide — He revels in the results, a delicious mix of chaos and mayhem. Wrap this all up in a “look ma’ no braces” package and the “Little Engine that never shoulda’, coulda’, or woulda’” has formed strong friendships with a veritable Who’s Who of celebrities.
Last night at a Michigan State University and University of Georgia Bowl-off at Splittsville, I got a chance to ask a few truly good sports a question… Thanks, Skyler, Jack, Nate, Ray, Chase and Blake for being so hilarious and such good sports and men with STYLE.
I also gave a $45 gift certificate to a great answer I got on twitter to the same question today.
Another giveaway tomorrow at 5:00 EST ! Follow me on twitter at @SueanneShirzay
You are all winners! Good Luck on Monday at Outback Bowl!
How about you? Which Outback food best describes YOUR personality???
Would you believe I won the Grand Prize trip from Outback Steakhouse to *journo* the Outback Bowl Game and the week of events leading up to the game using Social Media? Well, Hello, I DID! Outback is very generously flying me in to Tampa to cover the festivities from December 28th to January 2.
Oh, yes, and FOOTBALL! Tight ends meet split ends, Manolos meet muscle, baby! Right here.
I will leave no rib on the barbie unturned.
For me, this includes tweeting from @SueanneShirzay , my main twitter account, a little bit from @KillerSocial , because everywhere I go, Killer goes, (it’s a plastic knife, TSA, *wink* ) and of course @SueannesHair , because if I do what it says it won’t strangle me in my sleep,. I’m sure that do-gooder @Whatwedid4love will chime in here and again. My G+ pages will be running amuck amuck, amuck, amuck as well.
I’ll be blogging about Outback Bowl from Does this look good on me?, my style blog and Killer Social, my social media blog, if there is time. I guess this makes me the Sybil of Social Media , or in Aussie, *have my Kangaroos loose in the top paddock*, WOOOOOOT!
Please use this hashtag #OutbackBowl, follow when yammering on Google Plus and Twitter, so you can click on it, see what everybody else is saying and make some bonzer new friends! If there is something you want to know, just tweet me or ask me in the comment section of my blog or G+ page. To follow Outback or Outback Bowl click on the links!
Thank you so much, Dion Roy @DionRoy on twitter, for helping me out with the music for the video. Dion’s music can be found here on iTunes.
I had the wonderful experience of attending an Accessories Council event called *AC Pink Picks*, where they gave me products that will be available for purchase during October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month to share with you. Please take a few minutes to watch my video and share it with others for this very important cause. Thank you!
Here are the products that I show in my video and where you can purchase them. A percentage of all of these products will be donated to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Please click on the *Master Keynote* Link, or individual links. It’s 38 Pages of amazing stuff!!
A hurricane? Seriously.
Surely they will cancel or downgrade it, as they always do…
I knew about the upcoming hurricane, Irene, as I drove upstate to 140 conference Hudson Valley on a Monday, earlier in the week.
Right in the middle of the conference, an 5.8 earthquake rolled through, causing a ripple in the floor and quite literally making me feel nauseous. But I recovered. No Puke at 140.
I shakily stood up, looked around at the people around me and said. Wow this is an earthquake. And left the building. Fast.
The week before I had just had a flood in the basement in my south shore Long Island home due to a crazy 10 inches of rain deluge. Insurance claim. Juuust redid the floor Wednesday before the hurricane.
So… when I heard *hurricane*… I sort of thought… *bad things happen in threes* and took it seriously .
I got back from my conference on Wednesday, threw 3 computers and some non-perishables in the car, packed up and left again with a carload of protesting kids (we don’t want to leave our friends and the internet) on Thursday, more than 24 hours before a mandatory evacuation of 300,000 people was ordered from the south shore of Long Island. The husband promised he’d join us Friday.
As my home is directly across the street from the Atlantic, to me this was a no brainer. I could SEE the horror movie tidal wave hitting my house very easily.
What followed was surprising.
I invited family and friends to join me in my upstate home, 3 hours north of the south shore. Safe. Far away from chaos.
and… NOBODY took me up on my offer. Nobody. Many chose not to evacuate at all.
They cited work.
Work wanted them to stay.
How would they get to work.
Being self-employed for 20 years maybe I just do not get it. Don’t you have to be ALIVE to work? I hoped they would change their minds.
I could not ever be the type of employer who would not tell their employees to get the hell out and be safe. Kind of hard to go to work if you’re dead, isn’t it?
Ya think? Hmm. I’m repeating myself. Anyway….
As I saw all of the reports coming in on the local networks and weather channel, I grew even more worried. How many of my friends would be killed due to abject stupidity? This thing was coming right at us.
I told several of my twitter friends where I would be because my house is in a notch upstate with no cell service or for me, internet, and I go up here to disconnect so the only internet is 10 minutes away at an undisclosed location. Ok.. It’s where I get my bagels in Hunter. But I don’t always eat bagels. So I don’t always go online. Now you know.
I was amazed at the concern I was hearing in my twitter DMS and my texts on my phone went crazy as I came into cell service range. Where are you?! Did you leave? Please tell me you left. Run, Sueanne, RUNNN!!!
I made two trips to the grocery store because it was still unclear which of my family and friends would be joining me, if at all, and I was preparing for several days without electricity or water. Nobody at the store looked worried. They all have generators. I heard someone say *Oh, it’ll just be a little rain, so what?*
And we settled in to wait. I realized I left early but I’m not a big fan of traffic, and sure enough, when the Husband arrived Friday evening he assured me there was a mass exodus going on and the 3 hour drive took him almost 6. He told me the family wouldn’t be coming and we hoped they would use common sense and at least get to high ground. I made a ton of jewelry. It helped me take my mind off worrying a little bit. Not much.
We watched the news coverage and saw that the eye of the storm was probably going to hit our home, and mentally prepared ourselves to lose everything. I was sorry I hadn’t put more in the car, like passports and birth certificates. I kept thinking my kids wouldn’t be able to go to their new schools because I had no I.D. for them. Weird stuff like that. That’s what goes through your head.
We finally lost power at about 9:30 A.M. as we saw the footage of waves crashing into our town and the reporters being pummeled by wind 2 hours before the brunt of it was actually even supposed to hit. It was a sad moment as I realized that there would be loss of property and potentially life in the town that I love, and I would have no way to know what had happened. Our phone lines also went dead. We were now totally cut off.
We went about our business and didn’t let the kids see that we were worried. It was raining buckets in our upstate location but we didn’t feel like we were in any danger, except maybe a tree falling on our house. We watched the wind whip through the trees and ate. The kerosene cooktop still worked if you lit a match.
It seemed like it would never stop raining. All day it rained. We realized we were now going to have to deal with another problem. Flooding of the towns surrounding us. The elevation of my little burb isn’t usually a problem. Then the basement started flooding… about 6 inches. The sump pump didn’t work because there was no power. Nothing was ruined. The boiler is elevated. As a bonus we had a ton of water with which to flush the toilet with. YAY!!! Life was sweet.
We set out for a walk the next morning, which was a beautiful day, to inspect the damage and saw that several small bridges on our street that connected the road to homes were totally washed out. We were assured that nobody was trapped.
Then we got in the car and took a ride down rte. 214. That’s the video at the beginning at the blog. There was no cell service or electricity in Hunter either. Or Phoenicia. We heard the village of Windham was totally washed out when a dam broke. Sad stuff.
As the day went on we heard reports from all over New York on the AM radio. That was the only connection to the rest of the world other than talking to everybody we ran into in the neighborhood. What a mess. New Jersey seemed to be hit hardest and it seemed almost every road we take to go between upstate and downstate NY was closed. We had no idea what had happened to our home and if it was even standing. We were going to be stuck for a while. And we had no way to communicate. No phones were working. And of course, my hair would potentially look like crap for days on end.
Later that day, we finally found very kind merchants who were letting people use their phones to call their families and let them know you were ok. Thank you Ruth Gale Realty and The lady at the Pharmacy. You are very kind and generous people. We were so sad to see our favorite restaurant, Brios, was severely damaged in Phoenicia.
Finally, on Tuesday, two days after the hurricane, we packed up the car and took the long way out of town, about 45 minutes out of our way, because that was the only way out due to washed out roads and bridges.
As I drove into our South shore town, I was relieved to see almost no damage. Wow. Amazing. I still have not driven into the surrounding towns but I’m hearing some homes got flooded. I have not heard of any deaths here, and I’m so glad everyone is safe as I know there has been loss of life in this storm and river flooding and power outages continue to be a huge, huge problem.
I’m very thankful to the media and local governments for doing a fantastic job in warning people about this disaster and hope the relief efforts are as successful.
Hi there! It’s 7/28, my birthday, and although I’ll be celebrating well into a week, hey, maybe even a month—there is a gift I am giving myself and that is… *What We Did 4 Love*. This new wing of Sueanne Shirzay Jewelry is something I have been wanting to do for years and currently features myself and jewelry artists Tina Tang and Beth Lerner. More will be joining. My goal is to have other types of handmade goods on the site other than jewelry.
10% of sales will go to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, whom I have worked with for the past year on other philanthropic jewelry projects. They are an amazing group of people who save lives every single day.
If you are an interested artist, please contact me at sueanneshirzay3@gmail.com and thank you so much for your support as always. Please follow @WhatWe Did4Love on Twitter if you wish.
As a continuation of my last post about wardrobe basics, inspired by questions from my friend Linda, I have decided to cover the rear and tackle the topic of pants.
As usual, the jewelry I’m wearing in the video can be found by clicking here.
Habit 1 : Look like a snob, but don’t actually be one.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again-effective fashionistas know no labels. Labels are meaningless, as are prices. Learn to de-snob. You will never remember what you paid for something if you really really love it. Conversely, if it cost you fifty cents at the yard sale, who cares?
Bali Blues with Garnet
Even the Mecca of low-end—Target— actually has famous designers go in and do really low price limited edition collections. It’s excellent marketing for the designer as it makes people think they actually love their customers and generally offers great items. Zac Posen, Jean Paul Gaultier, Anya Hindmarch are a few of the designers who have done this.
Habit 2 : Always know where the endzone is, and don’t run the wrong way on the field
Don’t go into a store to get a pair of shoes and come out with two suits. Where are the shoes? You needed the shoes. The average U.S. Household spends $1800.00 annually on clothes. The average woman spends three years of her life shopping. Don’t make it six! In total 90 trips a year are dedicated to keeping up appearances – 30 to shop for clothes, 15 for shoes, 18 for accessories and 27 for bathroom essentials. Know what you want before you start looking for it. Think of those mall trips as search and destroy missions, not time sucks.
Habit 3: Exercise is important
To be an effective Fashionista, you need to be able to outrun people, specifically women between the ages of 18 and 55. Please lift weights as those biceps come in handy when you have to lift heavy bags. Hand-eye coordination is also great out at the mall. Practice by killing flies with a flyswatter. Or an old copy of Vogue.
Habit 4: Returning things is an art form of shopping where you actually make money
Many stores introduce new merchandise in 2 week cycles. Keep your receipts on you. Get a price adjustment if you buy something one week at full price and it gets marked down the next. Buy stuff before the sale and take it back 3 days later and get the sale price.
Never, ever, return stuff you have worn, that is oh-so-tacky and is a fashionista NO NO.
Everybody makes shopping mistakes. Fashionistas know when to return something that just doesn’t look good once it gets home.
Habit 5: Understand that Fashion Magazines and catalogs are either the work of the devil, or a capitalist plot to overthrow your bank account.
Only spend what you can afford. Every effective Fashionista knows that just because you want it doesn’t mean you need it. You know, like Antonio Banderas. Same thing. Only with shoes.
Habit 6: Realize that out of body experiences are for amateurs.
Never base a buying decision on emotion. Nothing will get you into trouble faster than developing emotional attachments to things. People count. Things don’t. Unless it’s a Tod’s bag at 50% off.
Habit 7: Bring enough candy for the entire class
When you go out shopping if you have good coupons, always give your extra one to the person behind you. Especially if it’s a long line. You will get to Fashionista heaven more quickly like this.
As long as I can remember, I have had a “thing” for handbags. Yes, Jewelry is not the first thing I developed an addiction for, it was in fact handbags. Now, lest you think this is a bad thing, I can assure you that it is NOT. Is it their leathery goodness, their color, their shiny hardware? Who knows? I just love them all.
I’m proud to introduce Anne Agoren, the designer of izzibag, to you in this video blog. The blog was originally longer, but YouTube has a 10 minute limit. You can’t imagine how tough it was to choose which bags made it into the video. Enjoy!
Anne’s beautiful and truly unique bags: izzibag, are new to the US and can be ordered by clicking here.
